Happy Chinese New Year!
Today the Year of the Fire Horse has started which stands for movement – and movement is what we want to bring to our development process this year! (hopefully at least) So...
What did we move last month?
1. We finished & playtested an early version of our demo!
As mentioned in last month’s update post, we plan to release the demo of our game at the end of this year. We finished the demo implementation-wise – visually there are still some area/asset reworks missing (Potion Map, Helio’s House) while others still need polishing. After that, we playtested the demo internally (meaning: we both played the demo on Steam separately for 1h+) and externally with 4 trusted playtesters (2 fellow devs & their non-dev partners).
2. We implemented playtesting feedback!
These 4 trusted playtesters then sent us their feedback in mostly written but also audio-visual form (a top-notch hour long video with commentary). Feedback we got and implemented were for example:
Too much info at the start of the game! The game fires hints that point to the ingame wiki which both overwhelmed the players. We reduced the number of hints and removed the hint's wiki button (because the wiki entry texts were the most overwhelming part (we will rework the wiki help texts in the future too)).
Start/spawned crops do not feel interactable. Therefore we added outlines to all interactable objects.
The plant UI was too overcomplicated. We reduced its information.
The plant colliders were a bit waggly. We added custom polygon colliders to all plant stages.
The wiki hierarchy UI with a list of buttons with the wiki entry’s content name on it wasn't that fun to use. We reworked the lists with content that could be visualized (like items with icons) to display their icons in a grid for a better overview and less reading (and scrolling).
3. We reworked Golembert’s idle animations!
Golembert had a very turned up idle where they would look in alternating directions every couple of seconds. We chilled that idle down to a simple breather with looking sideways variations every ~10 seconds.
And what are we currently working on?
1. Finishing the pending feedback implementations & preparing a new build!
There are about 13 minor external feedback points and around 14 internal fixes still pending. After implementing those, we plan to upload a new build and start our 2nd demo playtest with 4 other trusted playtesters.
2. Rendering Helio’s House!
Helio’s House render is still not fully finished. After that the final design of the Potion Map is the only major ingame area missing. Then we'll start working on our official demo trailer!
And that’s it already for this month!
If you would like to playtest our game well before its release to give us feedback AND receive our game for free, you should consider following us on any social media so you do not miss the start of our beta playtesting program mid/end of this year!!!
xoxo Gogodoll
Haven't watched our last devlog about how we make our dialogue portraits?
Then be sure to check it out on YouTube via this link:
